Children’s Videos with Hidden Promotions and their Impact on Video Viewership

Abstract

The promotion of products without proper disclosure poses a significant societal concern, particularly when the target audience comprises children lacking the cognitive ability to discern promotional intent. Recent proposed amendments to COPPA and analogous guidelines from various governments underscore a growing acknowledgment of the necessity for better safeguards on children’s platforms. Despite heightened public awareness, the comprehensive scope and implications of this issue remain under-studied, primarily due to the intricacies of analysing large volumes of content getting posted, e.g., thousands of videos uploaded to popular YouTube channels. This study aims to address this complexity by leveraging advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) to scrutinize a dataset of videos sourced from 100 prominent YouTube channels catering to children. We aim to address the issue of including promotions in children’s videos, and to subsequently inform policy regulations.

Platform Design to Curb Misinformation

Ongoing Research 2023 - 2024

We propose and test a crowd-based content moderation approach to combat the spread of misinformation. In
this method, users can flag posts they believe contain misinformation, with such flags serving as visible cues
to others. These cues then influence users’ moderation and sharing decisions.